Amphithéâtre Maurice Halbwachs, Site Marcelin Berthelot
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Abstract

In the context of global changes affecting biodiversity worldwide, to what extent flower visitors -and not just bees- are threatened by different environmental factors needs to be evaluated. This is critical if we are to mitigate the effects of global changes on these organisms along with their functions in ecosystems and the services they provide to human societies.

In 2010, the Photographic Survey of Flower Visitors (Spipoll) was launched to monitor plant-visitor interactions across France with the help of citizen scientists following a standardized protocol. During 20 minutes exactly, a volunteer takes pictures of every organisms visiting any flower of a chosen plant species. Date, time, location and conditions of observations, along with identifications of the plant and its visitors are provided by volunteers to a taxonomic resolution as fine as possible based on morphological characteristics visible on photographs (and using an interactive identification key specifically developed for the Spipoll). In this talk, after introducing the Spipoll protocol and unique dataset collected (more than 650,000 plant-visitor interactions across 75,000+ sampling locations), we will present the main results obtained since 2010 and develop scientific perspectives.

Nicolas Deguines

Nicolas Deguines
Photo credit: Hugo Struna

I've been a doctor in ecology at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle since 2013 and a lecturer at the University of Poitiers since 2020. As an ecologist, my research has two main objectives : 1) understand the effects of environmental changes of natural or anthropogenic origin on biodiversity, its functioning and ecosystem services, and 2) develop biodiversity conservation measures. In particular, I draw on tools and concepts from community ecology, landscape ecology, trophic ecology and conservation science. I am particularly interested in pollinators, notably through my involvement in the photographic monitoring of pollinating insects (Spipoll), and their responses to different environmental pressures (e.g. changes in land use, intensification of agriculture). Among others, sowbugs (terrestrial isopods) are organisms I study with interest.

Speaker(s)

Nicolas Deguines

Senior Lecturer, Ecology and Interaction Biology, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France

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